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I've always said that I can watch any horror film and enjoy it, no matter how bad. This film changed that fact! It's hard to believe that a film that involves Christine-like talking cars, fridge monsters made of bacteria and spooky robot boyfriends could be so tedious! I thought the last story, although very, very obvious, was the best of a bad bunch. The car story was just terrible. Also, what the hell has the bus journey go to do with the price of fish??? It seems just like a meaningless link between the stories that could have easily been elaborated and bettered. The acting wasn't the worst I've seen but the stories were simply not believable. Who, after being kissed by a gruesome fridge-bacteria monster, slaps their boyfriend and walks out calmly?! Anyway, not worth the £1.25 i spent on it from the Works stationary shop!

This is a very strange film, with a no-name cast and virtually nothing known about it on the web. It uses an approach familiar to those who have watched the likes of Creepshow in that it introduces a trilogy of so-called "horror" shorts and blends them together into a connecting narrative of the people who are involved in the segments getting off a bus. There is a narrator who prattles on about relationships, but his talking adds absolutely nothing to the mix at all and just adds to the confusion. As for the stories themselves, well.. I swear I have not got a clue why this movie got an 18 certificate in the UK, which would bring it into line with the likes of Nightmare On Elm Street and The Exorcist. Nothing here is even remotely scary.. there is no gore, sex, nudity or even a swear word to liven things up, this is the kind of thing you could put out on Children's TV and no-one would bat an eyelid. I can only think if it had got the rating it truly deserved (a PG) no serious horror fan would be seen dead with it, so the distributor probably buffeted the BBFC until they relented. Anyway, here are the 3 tales in summary: 1. A man becomes dangerously obsessed with his telekinetic car to the point of alienating his fiancee. 2. A man who lives in a filthy apartment is understandably freaked out when a living organism evolved from his six-month old tuna casserole. 3. A woman thinks she has found the perfect man through a computer dating service.. that is until he starts to act weird.. And there you have it. Some of them are pretty amusing due to their outlandish premises (my favourite being number 2) but you get the feeling they were meant to be a) frightening and b) morality plays, unfortunately they fail miserably on both counts. To sum up then, this flick is an obscure curiosity.. for very good reasons.

"Relationships are strange things" tells us the narrator (who keeps repeating the word "relationship" so many times that it gradually becomes annoying), this cheap little known Canadian horror anthology is a strange thing too. Three strangers on a bus each feature in a nightmarish short story: . (1) The Classic - Alex needs a new car, his girlfriend tells him that he can use some of their savings. To her surprise (and my delight, being a fan of classic vehicles) he buys an old red MG sports car. Only Alex can hear it but the car speaks to him in an English accent, "I think it's time we had a man to car talk" it tells him. The film has plenty of humour, some of which I found quite funny, for example Alex tells a used car salesman "I guess I just want what I can't have" and the guys replies "Oh tell me about it, I want my wife to look like Dolly Parton!" I did laugh at that one, ha ha. (2) Kitchen Culture - Heavy drinking slob Frank is told to clean up his squalid apartment by his landlord. A talking green creature grows from bacteria in his filthy fridge, it has the form of a bold headed half-man but only from the waist up. This sort of reminded me a little of "Basketcase" and is the most inventive of the 3 segments, though that's not saying much!

(3) Too Good to be True - An attractive woman called Susan Hill joins a dating agency (long before the days of doing it online), she meets a handsome chap named Chris, all seems fine at first but then he starts exhibiting strange behaviour. Apart from the couple visiting a botanical garden that features some fine cacti this final story just went nowhere. Along with other reviewers I simply cannot understand why in Britain this was rated 18 by the BBFC, there is nothing in the content that warrants it. As for the movie itself it is very low budget, taking that into consideration the end product is alright for a one time watch, especially for those of us who do like obscure horror anthologies. At 82 minutes in length the running time is sufficient. My DVD case promises "One Bus. 3 Nightmares. One Scary Ride" They got the last part wrong!

This is one of the most unusual movies I've ever encountered. Atrocious in every aspect, but unusual. For clarity, we must travel back to the halcyon days of the late 1990s. DVD was making its first strides to make VHS obsolete, with DVD players becoming affordable, and the imminent arrival of the PS2 with inbuilt DVD player meant the ability to watch movies on disc was becoming more common in households across the world. In the U. K. a new release cost £20 (insane given that DVDs were much cheaper to make than VHS tapes) so it wasn't long before companies cropped up to try take advantage of this growing market.

The 2 most prominent here were Prism Leisure and Hollywood DVD. Prism discs came in at £5.99 and were unashamed B movies. A lot of Full Moon stuff and mid-range 80s horror or action flicks found their way onto these discs. Then there was Hollywood DVD. At an absolute maximum these cost £4.99, but we're usually in special offers to get cheaper, things like 3 for £10. The problem with Hollywood DVD was you genuinely had no idea what you were getting; if you were lucky it was a Nu Image creature, but there was more chance of you getting a TV Pilot that wasn't picked up. They were notorious for picking up awful movies that had stars before they were famous and editing the sleeve to give them too billing, regardless of their part.

It was one of those aforementioned deals I found myself in possession of With Friends Like These... via alongside Ken Wahl's failed vigilante tv pilot The Gladiator and The Legend of Bogg Creek II. You know the worst thing? I was looking forward to it! It's sleeve had a bit of mystique about it - no pictures, and a 3 line, vague blurb that told me nothing. All I had to go on was a monstrous figure reaching out on the cover and an 18 rating. What was this that they couldn't even show pictures from?

They were probably embarrassed. It's an anthology, and quite impressive in that it has 3 opportunities to present stories and managed to make an utterly awful job out of all of them. There's a bookend 'plot' revolving around a bus and a narrator who chronically over uses the word 'Relationships'. The purpose appears to be our protagonists are all on that bus at some point but don't expect any explanation beyond that.

Our first focus falls on a hapless man who buys a classic car that telepathically communicates with him and starts to dominate his life. Christine it ain't.

The second and probably the most interesting, though that's a low bar, sees a slobbish man discover the tuna casserole in his fridge evolve into a sentient being that tries to help him improve his life.

The third, and mercifully final, tale involves a girl who meets the perfect man on a dating service only for him him to prove more than meets the eye.

Yeah I'm not beating around the bush, this is awful from start to finish. Awful dialogue, bland plots that offer no excitement, acting that I'm being generous even describing as such (very few people involved in this movie appeared in another) this is a complete full house of awful. I genuinely believe someone at Hollywood slipped the BBFC some money to ensure this got an 18 to give it some street cred as there is nothing to earn it.

This film has no redeeming features. It's not so bad it's funny, it's just unrelentingly, mercilessly, awful. Thankfully it's now very hard to come by, and frankly it wouldn't be any great disaster if every copy of it were to be destroyed.

I acquired this film a couple of years ago and on trying to find some info about it I found that even the mighty IMDb didn't have it listed. That should have been all I needed to know.

With Friends Like These is an anthology that plays like a collection of second rate Twilight Zone / Outer Limits episodes all linked together by a bus journey that never really seems to tie in with the rest of the film. Of the three stories, the only one that I gleaned any entertainment value from was the second episode in which a man (of sorts) grows out of the bacteria in a guys fridge. This episode wins points for a few spots of humour and it's bizarre premise. Other than that there is an episode with a talking car (bland and directionless) and an episode where a girl visits a very unique dating agency (my dog guessed the ending of this one).

As has been mentioned in other comments, the 18 rating is entirely unwarranted. There is nothing to offend here. If you're after a good horror anthology check out Asylum or the Creepshow films instead.